Over the last several years, I have become aware of a phenomenon; first from my teacher Thom Knoles, then within myself and then my awareness broadened to see it in all of humanity and nature. “THE DUST OFF.” This phenomenon is such that we humans tend to do a mental, emotional, and/or physiological DUST OFF, just before we take an evolutionary LEAP and experience any major personal growth. In other words, we tend to regress, just before we progress.

When our Son was an infant and toddler, just before he would take a major leap in independence such as sitting up, crawling, walking, talking, or ceasing to breastfeed, he would seemingly regress emotionally, mentally or physically: such as become quite clingy, needy, have trouble doing things that he was previously proficient at, or breastfeed obsessively. Then, boom, he would take a major leap into the next phase of his evolution.

Post becoming aware of this phenomenon, I have witnessed myself, family and friends go through it many times. Just before we are about to let go of a thinking pattern or behavior and adopt a new, more evolutionary one, we tend to burrow back into that pattern or behavior one last time, sometimes more than ever, as if to absolutely make sure that we are ready to let it go. It seems as though we need to experience it in a way that finally leaves us without a doubt that we are ready to leave it behind.

I find that these Dust Offs differ in length and intensity, depending upon the scale of the evolutionary leap that is on the horizon. A more recent one for me was short and of a medium intensity, ultimately clearing the way for some perspective and behavioral changes and taking steps towards even greater responsibility as a teacher.

My largest Dust Off so far came in the form of my two several-month nervous breakdowns over the course of a year, which were the pre-cursors to disclosing my childhood abuse experience, beginning my healing journey, my entire perspective and experience of life changing, moving to Hawai’i, leaving the entertainment business and in many ways, beginning my life again. An equitable exchange was had.

The reason I share this observation is that I have found having this knowledge to be quite helpful when in the midst of a seeming regression. Let’s say we find ourselves engaging in thinking, and/or behaviors that we thought we were done with and we get really down on ourselves about it. Then we remember the DUST OFF phenomenon and maybe we’re able to cut ourselves a break for seemingly regressing a little, knowing that it is solely a part of the mechanism by which we advance to something greater. Then we can become curious, maybe even excited, as to what evolutionary leap may be on the horizon.

When it is time to upgrade our computer software, an often essential part of that process is for the computer to do a system wide sweep and delete all the files that have become irrelevant in order to make space for the new software to run optimally. This Dust Off phenomenon awareness helps us to identify thoughts, emotions and behaviors that the universe is highlighting for deletion and become proactive in that evolutionary deletion process in order to make space for our new thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and state of consciousness to arrive and run optimally.

The arrow is pulled far back upon the bow in order to propel it forward with speed, distance and acuity.

In order to make this understanding real for you, maybe take some past inventory of periods of major growth in your life and see if you can identify the preceding Dust Off phenomenon that occurred. 365, 24/7, the demand on us from the universe is to change, to evolve. So let’s revel in the DUST OFF and LEAP.